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Reliance, Bill Gates, other investors to invest $144 mn in Ambri Inc

2021-08-11

On Tuesday, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) told the media that the company, along with Bill Gates, Paulson & Co, an investment management firm and a few other investors, would invest $144 million in Ambri Inc, a US-based energy storage firm.

The investment will commercialise and grow the company's long-duration battery storage systems. The company is to invest after Reliance unveiled an investment of $10 billion in a green power plant for net carbon zero by 2035, along with developing four Giga factories in Jamnagar, Gujarat, as a project of the Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex. The facility will produce solar cells, solar modules, energy storage batteries, fuel cells and green hydrogen.

The company said that the wholly-owned company of Reliance, Reliance New Energy Solar Ltd (RNESL), would acquire 42.3 million preferred shares of Ambri Inc worth $50 million.

It also said that RNESL and Ambri are planning an exclusive collaboration to set up a large-scale battery manufacturing facility in India.

The energy storage systems of Ambri, which will last for 4-24 hours, will break through the cost, longevity, and safety barriers of the lithium-ion batteries used in grid-scale stationary storage applications, Mukesh Ambani said. The company will enable an energy storage solution to increase the amount of renewable energy being integrated into electric power grids.

Ambri said that it would use the investments to build and design high-volume manufacturing facilities in the US and overseas to supply its long-duration battery systems to meet the demand of the grid-scale energy storage system market and large industrial energy customers.

The entry of Reliance in India's renewable energy will bring competition to other renewable companies, including AdaniGreen Energy Limited and ReNew Power.

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